Brian Naylor

In this role, he covers politics and federal agencies, including transportation and homeland security.

With more than 30 years of experience at NPR, Naylor has served as National Desk correspondent, White House correspondent, congressional correspondent, foreign correspondent and newscaster during All Things Considered. He has filled in as host on many NPR programs, including Morning Edition, Weekend Edition and Talk of the Nation.

During his NPR career, Naylor has covered many of the major world events, including political conventions, the Olympics, the White House, Congress and the mid-Atlantic region. Naylor reported from Tokyo in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, from New Orleans following the BP oil spill, and from West Virginia after the deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine.

While covering the U.S. Congress in the mid-1990s, Naylor's reporting contributed to NPR's 1996 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism award for political reporting.

Before coming to NPR in 1982, Naylor worked at NPR Member Station WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and at a commercial radio station in Maine.

The U.S is home to the most Christians in the world, but the number of Americans who identify as Christian is declining, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center. The survey of more than 35,000 Americans also found the number of people who consider themselves unaffiliated with any religion, or "nones," is growing.

This is National Infrastructure Week in Washington, D.C. That's when serious policy wonks, along with the construction, labor groups and other related industries, hold conferences, raise awareness and maybe most important, lobby Congress on behalf of road, bridge and other brick and mortar and concrete improvements.

There is added urgency to their efforts this year, as federal highway building money is set to run out, probably sometime this summer, and so is the government's authority to spend what little money it has left.

The European Union has presented a proposal to the United Nations aiming to stem the flood of migrants from the Middle East and Africa to Europe. The plan includes seizing and destroying the boats that smugglers are using to transport the migrants across the Mediterranean Sea. The EU's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, briefed the U.N. Security Council on the proposal Monday morning. "We need to count on your support to save lives," Mogherini told council members.

President Obama is accomplishing something today that few of his predecessors can claim. He's going to South Dakota — and his visit will allow him to brag that he has now set foot in each of the 50 states. In fact, only three U.S. presidents can make that claim: Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Keeping track of the traffic in the skies above us is a big job. The nation's air traffic control system has been reliable, but it's not very efficient. And efforts to replace it with newer technology have gotten bogged down by a combination of uncertain congressional funding and the slow-moving federal bureaucracy. Now, some in Congress want to get the government out of the air traffic control business.

The Federal Aviation Administration says some 7,000 aircraft are over the U.S. at any given time.

A congressional panel on Tuesday released a video surveillance tape of an incident near the White House in which a government car driven by Secret Service agents appears to brush a barrier in an area where a suspicious package was being investigated.